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Comment by pstoll | Hacker News Reader

He didn’t go the hospital. That doesn’t change the overwhelmingly positive benefits of “hospitalization rates”.

I agree. However I am fed up with the cdc, youtube, facebook and others trying to control the narrative in any way they can. For instance not considering past infection as equal to a vaccination. Follow the science or don’t but do whatever truthfully. The next time when the cdc needs us to have faith in their recommendations we won’t have. This shouldn’t even be fathomable but here we are.

> For instance not considering past infection as equal to a vaccination

The CDC has published data on this multiple times... Vaccination seems to be more protective than a past infection. A past infection is approximately equal to a single dose of a two-dose vaccine.

e.g. CDC MMWR August 2021, https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm "These findings suggest that among persons with previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, full vaccination provides additional protection against reinfection. To reduce their risk of infection, all eligible persons should be offered vaccination, even if they have been previously infected with SARS-CoV-2."

The linked study does NOT say that past infection is less protective than two vaccine doses. It says that getting vaccinated in addition to having a past infection provides additional protection. It says nothing about the protection provided by past infection only versus two doses without past infection.

The CDC issued a false press release misrepresenting the conclusions of this study, at https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

That's the sort of thing that destroys the CDC's credibility.

Just looked at the press release and there doesn’t appear to be any misrepresentation involved. The press release clearly talks about the benefits of vaccination even after a previous COVID-19 infection, just as the study did.

CDC credibility seems intact here, but online anti vaxxer credibility continues to decline…

The title of the press release is "New CDC Study: Vaccination Offers Higher Protection than Previous COVID-19 Infection". That is false. The first paragraph of the release says "These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone". That is false.

Seems like you stopped reading . The full sentence you quote is “These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.”

Reinfections is the key word here indicating the study is about reinfections. You’re assuming it’s about initial infections. If they didn’t repeatedly say the word “reinfections” in the press release, you might have a point, but the reality is the CDC summary is accurate, as is the headline message that people will get stronger protection if they get vaccinated.

If someone says "X and Y", and X is false, then what they say is false.

You're arguing that someone who already knows what the study says can re-interpret the statements in the press release as being true, by adding a few additional qualifiers like "among the already infected" here and there, on the assumption that they were just omitted for brevity. But the intended reader, who doesn't already know what the study really says, will read the statements as written, and will receive a false communication.

No, I’m arguing your complaint is based on your own misreading. Some form of “reinfected” or “reinfections” appears 4 times in the press release.

There’s no need to “add qualifiers” - simply to not remove them.

Read the title. What does it say? What it says is false. Note that many people won't read beyond the title.

Read the second sentence of the first paragraph. It says two things, the first of which is false.

You're arguing that the press release is fine, because although it contains false statements, it also contains some true statements.

The vast majority of cases don't end up in the hospital, vaccinated or otherwise. People seem to forget this fact.

The “only 1% will die” argument, sure I remember that one from early days.

But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people. My advice is don’t break your arm or get in a car accident or have a heart attack right now - it could be lethal because health care resources are at a breaking point (in the US).

Truly a novel situation we find ourselves in:

https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Ahospitals+intitle%...

I think activating “crisis standards of care” is a bit more substantial and worrying than any previous claims of being simply “overwhelmed” which could be subjective. This is what we are seeing here in the US.

https://www.google.com/search?q=intitle%3Ahospitals+intitle%...

Check the death statistics instead of headlines and you'll see it truly is a novel situation - no previous year saw as many Americans die as 2020 and 2021. And excess deaths correspond closely to regions that saw high reported COVID-19 deaths, indicating "COVID-19 deaths" are people who would not have died had they not been infected with and killed by COVID-19.

2022 death rates are still high, nearing 2000 people killed by COVID-19 daily. We can hope that due to the death toll hitting mostly the unvaccinated, plus omicron being a somewhat milder than Delta, we won't possibly be able to hit the same high death rates all year long.

No previous year saw as many Americans live as 2020 and 2021 either :)

https://www.census.gov/popclock/

https://data.census.gov/cedsci/table?tid=PEPNATMONTHLY2021.N...

Good thing births offset deaths :)

That data is irrelevant to my point. Compare deaths from 2015 through 2021 on a bar chart and the discontinuity is obvious even to the naked eye.

See the charts shown on https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2021/04/25/is-it-real... for a simple visual example.

I don't think this is as widespread as people believe. Certain locales tend to be overwhelmed at any given time, but I don't think that's the case for the majority of hospitals in the country. Unfortunately I don't have any statistics.

>But hospitals are currently overwhelmed with mostly voluntarily unvaccinated people

This has been the narrative for a while now, but as vaccination rates increase the ratio of vaccinated:unvaccinated hospitalized patients is approaching and surpassing parity. And some not so recent government data from the UK[0] (I haven't seen any media report on it) suggests that for a number of age ranges, vaccinated individuals have a similar death rate per person-year, i.e. vaccines are not doing nearly as much as claimed. This data is pre omicron.

0. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde... - check table 7 in the spreadsheet. Maybe I'm misinterpreting something?

> as vaccination rates increase the ratio of vaccinated:unvaccinated hospitalized patients is approaching and surpassing parity.

Parity as in 1:1? Because I’m pretty sure raw counts and case rates are still nowhere near parity. You mentioned data by age ranges as well.

This commentary on a new study is pretty good: https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1482501951065661440?s=21

Pointing to this recent study: https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...

I am under the impression that many hospitals are overwhelmed because they have a lack of nurses, not a lack of rooms.

lacking nurses because they were already sparsely hired in efforts to maximize profits over patient comfort pre-pandemic,

of those that were working the field; many have left their job to make 5 times more money as a traveling nurse elsewhere (?) - many have left the job because they find it too stressful for the benefits it offers them - and many are out sick.

Does anyone think that hospitals are going to raise what they pay nurses now? are we going to invest in nursing in ways that gets lots more to choose it as a career path because X and Y things are going to be so much greater for them in the future?

I'm not holding my breathe that hospitals are going to change the pay rate for the most missed resource, or that they will hire twice as many as they've had in the past.. and that the future of nursing is going to be any better - so we better hope that treatment pills become a thing.

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